During this lesson we learnt that things can be represented in a number of different ways, and a representation can change depending on who is creating the text. A representation is a mixture of the thing itself, the opinions of the people who created the text, the reaction of people viewing the text and the context of society.

All media texts are a representation of reality, or a representation of someones concept of existence.

When you are studying representations you must consider these following questions;

- Who produced it?

- What is represented in the text?

- How is it represented?

- Why was it represented in this way?

- What might the alternative have been?

There are four factors of representation. These are gender, race, socioeconomic status and disability.

My Media Blog

As part of my A Level Media Course I have been asked to keep a blog. This blog will be used to record what we cover in lessons, and also to write about the media we consume outside of the classroom.

During our first media lessons we covered media consumption. Here we looked at a research paper written by Matthew Robson on how teenagers consume media daily. (The paper can be found here - http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jul/13/teenage-media-habits-morgan-stanley) This research paper was shockingly true to many of us, even if a few bits were out of date, due to the advancement in technology over the past few years alone.

After reading the research paper we were asked to make a prediction as to how much time we spend daily consuming media, and then to keep a diary of our media consumption over one weekend. Mine read a bit like this...

Friday

Radio driving to school and during work - 5 hours and 45 mins

Tv - 50 mins

Computer in school - 50 mins

Mobile - 1 hour and 10 mins

Social networking - 5 mins

Music via spotify - 20 mins

4oD - 20 mins

Saturday

Gaming - 4 hours

TV - 30 mins

Radio whilst driving - 30 mins

Social networking - 5 mins

Mobile - 10 mins

DVD - 2 hours

Sunday

Newspaper - 20 mins

Radio whilst driving - 30 mins

Social networking - 10 mins

Computer - 2 hours

Mobile - 20 mins

My media consumption totalled at 20 hours and 5 mins for the whole weekend. The most shocking to me was how much radio I actually listened to, as my prediction was 2 hours for a week. However, I actually listened to the radio for 6 hours and 45 mins throughout the weekend alone.

It really is surprising just how much media we consume on a daily basis, whether it be by listening to the radio, watching the television or reading the newspaper.